Customer Reviews

Haw-Haw

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Tells the story of Lord Haw Haw (William Joyce), the wartime broadcaster from Germany, later hanged for treason in Britain. Presents Joyce as a tragic figure with strongly held (if seriously flawed) beliefs. I had not been aware of his (and for a while dominant) role in British interwar fascism, made clear in the book. Much writing is devoted to the time in wartime Berlin - and the experiences of their living as a couple in an alien environment with limited grasp of the language...... His postwar trial nonetheless is shown as a vengeful travesty of British justice - which Joyce accepts with grace (and perhaps a little enigmatic comfort from MI5..... - are the secret MI5 files on Joyce's possible work with them still closed?).

Nigel Farndale's biography, "Haw-Haw", follows the life and career of William and Margaret Joyce, a fascist couple who acquired fame by leaving and betraying Great Britain during the Second World War. They became Lord and Lady Haw-Haw, broadcasting in English from Germany and providing pro-Nazi commentary and news in an attempt to propagandize to the English people. After the war, the Allies captured them, and the British hanged William for treason while Margaret was interned until 1948.

The tragedy alluded to in the sub-title is the fact that William was executed by the British for treason when he was in fact an American citizen who took up German citizenship in 1940, over a year before the US and Germany were at war. His conviction and execution were basically a legal travesty, more an act of vengeance than justice.

Farndale illustrates this well throughout his book, although he does dwell a little too long on Joyce's trial in the last section. Farndale also manages to create a sympathetic portrayal of the Joyces, despite their political beliefs and aspects of their eccentric lifestyles (alcoholism, infidelity, and domestic violence).

What is perhaps the most entertaining and important part of the book is its window into the minds of many leading figures in the nineteen-thirties who flirted intellectually and even politically with fascism. From Ezra Pound to the Daily Mail newspaper in England, there was a legion of fellow travelers who initially gave fascism the thumbs-up, with some of them professing their faith for this newfound religion right up to the bitter end.

At the same time, Farndale shows the Joyces, especially William, to have been all too human. William was widely acknowledged as charming and dynamic, and, like Oswald Mosley, believed by many to have had quite a future in politics before turning down the wrong path. Even though he became something of a joke as Haw-Haw, the man was a complex individual. Margaret, whose story was given too little time in this book, was less intellectually astute but still very vivid a personality.

The impact of Lord Haw-Haw and his broadcasts are also depicted quite well by Farndale, capturing the fear and paranoia that existed in Britain during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, and how Joyce and his broadcasts played into that. A subject of both fear and ridicule, Lord Haw-Haw achieved a surprising infamy that later led to his downfall.

I would recommend this book for anyone who wants a good overview of Joyce and an introduction to English Fascism.